


Alive

by embolalia



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: End of the world scenes, F/M, canon infanticide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-06
Updated: 2014-09-06
Packaged: 2018-02-16 09:01:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2263752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embolalia/pseuds/embolalia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Caprica faces what it means to be alive and to be dead as a planet dies around her - and whether it's true that in love new life is born.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Six stumbled through the crowd, Cavil's words ringing in her mind.  _It’s not possible. And even if it is, it doesn’t matter. You’re here to complete a mission, and you’ve nearly done so. It’s far too late to turn back now._  
  
She stopped short at the sight of a baby-carriage, an island of stillness in the mass of people. She edged closer, peeked down at the infant resting inside. Its chest was rising and falling beneath a carefully tucked blanket, its eyes the dark blue of a new creature. She lifted it gently, the weight of it, the fragility making her want to cry. For a moment she imagined she were holding her own child in her arms.  
  
As the mother turned away Six reached down, exploring the fine line between this little boy being alive and being dead. Crossed it. She felt the snap beneath her fingers and fled the scene, fled the knowledge that her own child would soon be just as dead.  
  
Leaning against the side of a building, she gasped as the implications of her conversation with Cavil finally sank in. The baby inside her, that tiny ember of life, would not last the day. Behind her somewhere, Chantara was screaming. Six wanted to scream too.  
  
*  
  
She made her way out of the city, back to Gaius’ house. She sat in the car, not ready to go inside. She hadn’t told him; it had been two years but she still wasn’t sure what he’d say. Gaius didn’t know what she was, wouldn’t realize that they’d taken part in a miracle, wouldn’t hear her if she tried to explain that their baby was the embodiment of God’s love.  
  
She hadn’t believed it herself at first, hadn’t understood the changes in her body. In the end a simple test gave her the answer, and suddenly she’d felt she’d always known, that this was her true purpose.  
  
Tears began to slip down her cheeks as Six headed down to the lake, stared out across a pristine piece of a world that was about to be gone. If he’d just said he loved her, there would be an explanation. But he wouldn’t. Didn’t...  
  
Once long ago, in the murky time before she could remember, Leoben had written her a prayer. She didn’t understand how he knew the things he knew, but he had said she’d need it. She wondered if he was thinking of this moment, even then. Six whispered it now, staring across the lake, one hand pressed tightly over her belly, asked the cloud of unknowing to take her child’s soul to safety...and Gaius’, too.  
  
*  
  
Inside the house she found Gaius with a woman and was glad she hadn’t asked him to join her. She told him her other secrets, by way of apology, and right at the end, when he gasped to her that he didn’t want to die, it flashed through her mind that their child wouldn’t want to die either. A second after she pushed Gaius down the world went black.  
  
Six gasped to life in a resurrection tub on a basestar somewhere. Her questing hand slipped below the surface, ran over her abdomen, found it empty.  
  
***  
  
Years later, curled around her in a bed on Colonial One on a far away planet, Gaius whispers into her hair that he loves her. Six, called Caprica now, can’t help thinking that if he’d said it back then, just once, she might have stopped the apocalypse. It weighs too heavily on her heart to imagine them all back on Caprica, to imagine herself and Gaius raising the child she carried so briefly. So she turns her face into his chest, and whispers simply that she loves him too.


	2. Chapter 2

The knowledge arrives suddenly, as she's walking from the garden to the house, and Caprica stops in her tracks. A dozen small changes in her body come to mind all at once and she knows. The basket of tomatoes falls to the ground unheeded as her hands press over her abdomen. Caprica stares down at her fingers, at her still-flat stomach. Someone's alive in there.

She returns the tomatoes to their carrier and leaves them, wanders down to the lake beside which she and Gaius have built their house. He's off in the east field today. For a little while at least, Caprica is alone.

She settles on the rocky shore, her feet in the water. It's summer on Earth and the breeze-driven waves that reach her on the bank are warm. Caprica watches the ripples, the perfect circles. That first time, that first baby, she didn't understand the fragility of life, the way a human being could be gone as quickly as the plucking of a flower. The way she could be, now. For seven years she has tried to put that child out of her mind, but now she wonders: what if she'd stopped everything? What if she and Gaius were still back on Caprica, sending their child off to school and tucking her in at night? She looks across the lake to the tent near the town center where the children spend their days. She laughs in delight. It's not too late.

Then she sobers. The second time, Saul's baby, taught her the price of hope. Little Liam, laying cold and blue outside of her body where she couldn't protect him anymore--Caprica is flooded by terror for just a moment. She can't do that again. There are already two children in her heart who have never drawn breath. Liam would be walking by now, struggling to speak. Sarah would coddle him, her little brother, their second miracle.

"Caprica?"

Turning, she sees Gaius approaching, his skin tanned and his hair cut short against the heat. She smiles.

Gaius settles himself beside her, his foot in the water touching hers. He lays a hand on the back of her neck, stroking her hair. "I love you," he says.

Tears flood her eyes; she pitches forward against him as Gaius catches her close.

"Well--I--Are you alright?" he stammers, eyes flashing in concern.

Caprica kisses him hard, sighing when Gaius pulls back to hold her face between his hands and study her seriously.

"Darling, what is it?" he asks.

She closes her eyes. "Back on Caprica," she says softly, and feels him stiffen. They both know their responsibility for everything that's happened to their races; they rarely discuss it. "Did you love me then?"

"Yes," he says, with such certainty that tears flood her eyes. “As much as I knew how.” Gaius wipes away the one that escapes her lashes, his voice pleading, "Tell me! What's wrong?"

Caprica opens her eyes, blinking the tears away, smiling at him in awe. "We're having a baby."


End file.
